


Too silly, too slow, too late

by Ammeh



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ammeh/pseuds/Ammeh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leandra's final thoughts and regrets</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too silly, too slow, too late

**Author's Note:**

> Posted ages ago on the DA kink meme, hence the backdating.
> 
> I am aware that the order of quest events is a bit questionable but I wrote it without looking them up, and I can't think of any replacements now.

Why hadn’t she ever learned to fight?  
  
It had never seemed proper, then necessary—she had been a noble, soft hands and servants with no place for blades or bows…and then there had been Malcolm, strong arms and fireballs and a life on the run, and she had been too young and giddy, too pregnant once the stars wore out of her eyes and Malcolm wasn’t the invincible man-god she’d dreamed him to be.  
  
And then there had been children, three mouths to feed and nurture and no time for anything but gap-toothed smiles and stolen kisses behind two, three, five cottages. The sixth cottage and Bethany was conjuring shards of ice beneath her father’s watchful eye, Carver was swinging a stick about in the fields, and Marian was shooting apples off the trees with a smile like nothing could ever go wrong. And there was grey at her temples, a life to build and Templar to avoid and it was awfully late, awfully silly to be learning daggers at her age, wasn’t it?  
  
 _Not silly_ , she realized, hands bound and some grotesque headless meat puppet laid out on a table before her. But her hands could do nothing, nothing but lay comfortingly on Marian’s shoulder as she cursed the world some nights, cursed her own slowness.  
  
 _“They killed his **lover** , Mother, and…if I’d only been five minutes earlier I could have…”_  
  
And she’d been so worried for Marian, all she had left…never thought to worry about herself, her childhood home lulling her into her childhood sense of security even as she left the protection of Hightown to visit her brother past dark alleys.  
  
“My daughter will come for me,” she said, chin high, meeting his mad gaze until her eyes were gone and she couldn’t meet anything at all. Marian would come. She had to.  
  
 _“Someone sent him a false note and he was dead when I got there, Mother, I tried to catch him on the way but I couldn’t find him anywhere…”_  
  
He just laughed, and then her wrists were cut open and burning, wet tendrils coiling around her neck and squeezing sharply and she felt her skin give, pain all through her neck and _inside_ where she’d never felt pain before. She waited for the world to fade out but it didn’t, even as she felt her head lifted from her body and _carried_ , something cold and clammy against the screaming wound and tiny pinpricks in a slow circle around the _painpainpain_.  
  
 _“She tried to look into it for us, and he killed her for looking. I went to meet her and she was lying there dead.”_  
  
And then she could see again, see the sick joy lighting up his face as his blood-streaked hand stroked her cheek and she shut herself off, delving inwards until she heard the screams and _Marian_ , Marian was there, wild-eyed and covered in blood and sobbing, and Leandra prayed she wouldn’t blame herself, because she wouldn’t be there to comfort her this time.


End file.
